Italian Police Seize $286M Cocaine Hidden in Banana Shipment

Italian police on Tuesday seized pure cocaine with an estimated street value of $286 million hidden inside containers of bananas at the port of Vado Ligure in northwest Italy.

Some 1,700 pounds of the drug was concealed in a refrigerated container from Ecuador among pallets of bananas, police said. Authorities released a video showing officers pulling the alleged drugs from the shipment.

Following a previous drug seizure at the same port, authorities have increased monitoring of Vado Ligure as a potential transit point for international trafficking. The port's role as a growing European trade hub makes it an attractive target for criminal networks, investigators said.

Police earlier this month seized 340 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated street value of 120 million euros in the same port.

The discovery is the latest in a string of major cocaine seizures involving banana shipments. In March, three people were charged in the United Kingdom after they allegedly attempted to traffic nearly $100 million worth of cocaine in a shipment of the fruit. Last August, Greek police seized nearly 600 pounds of cocaine hidden inside a container of bananas imported from Ecuador. In July 2025, Russia reported seizing 1,800 pounds of cocaine under a banana shipment. Two months earlier, employees at a Norwegian fruit distributor discovered a packet of cocaine in a box of bananas, leading customs officials to a stash of 147 kilos. In December 2024, authorities in the Dominican Republic confiscated nearly 9.5 tons of cocaine from a banana shipment at the country's largest seaport. In August 2024, customs agents seized more than 200 pounds of cocaine at the port in Greece from a ship carrying the fruit, and the month before, police dogs in Ecuador helped find more than six tons of cocaine hidden in a banana shipment headed to Germany.